The world was brown and wet.
Three days ago, the Roman Legion had been a creature of iron and discipline, marching in straight lines under golden eagles.
Now, it was a worm.
Marcus trudged through the slime of the Decumanus Trench. The mud sucked at his boots with a wet, obscene popping sound. It coated his greaves, his tunic, his skin. It wasn't just dirt; it was a slurry of clay, shit, and spilled lamp oil.
The trench was a scar cut deep into the Syrian desert. Seven feet down. Four feet wide. Reinforced with scavenged timber and stripped wagon wheels.
Above, the sky was gray and indifferent.
"Move," Marcus growled, shouldering past a group of soldiers huddled under a dripping canvas tarp.
They didn't salute. They barely looked up. Their eyes were hollow, staring at nothing. The "Thousand-Yard Stare" had arrived in the second century, eighteen hundred years early.
The Ghost of Commodus hated it.
The entity in Marcus's brain screamed at him to draw his sword. Discipline! it roared. Flog them! Decimate them! A soldier who sits is a soldier who dies!
Marcus shoved the Ghost down. He clenched his jaw until his teeth ached.
He stopped in front of a young legionary—a boy, really, no older than sixteen. The kid was curled in a ball, shivering violently, his knuckles white around the shaft of his pilum. He was crying. Silent, racking sobs that shook his ribs.
The Ghost saw a coward. Marcus saw a victim of shell shock.
Marcus knelt in the muck. The cold water seeped instantly through his breeches.
"Soldier," Marcus said. His voice was rough, scraping like sandpaper.
The boy flinched, looking up with wide, terrified eyes. He saw the Emperor. He tried to scramble to his feet, slipping in the slime.
"Sit," Marcus ordered.
He unclipped the wineskin from his belt and held it out.
"Drink."
The boy hesitated, then grabbed the skin with shaking hands. He gulped the sour wine down, red liquid spilling onto his chin.
"It's not magic," Marcus said, loud enough for the men around them to hear. He gestured at the sky. "The birds are wood. The fire is oil. If you bleed, you can kill. Do you understand?"
The boy wiped his mouth. The terror in his eyes didn't vanish, but it solidified into something harder. Resignation.
"Yes, Caesar."
"Good. Then dig."
Marcus stood up and walked away. He felt the Ghost sneering at his softness.
You coddle them, the voice whispered. They need fear to keep them warm.
They have enough fear, Marcus thought back. They need to know the monster has a throat.
He reached the command bunker.
It was a hole in the wall of the trench, shored up with thick beams of cedar. The air inside was thick and stale, smelling of unwashed bodies and burning ozone.
Galen sat hunched over a table that looked like an altar to a new, strange god.
The physician hadn't slept in three days. His eyes were red-rimmed, manic. His bandaged ears were stained with fresh yellow fluid.
On the table sat the "Organ."
It was a monstrosity of Marcus's design and Galen's madness. A row of five glass tubes—the Coherers—wired together in a parallel circuit. Each one was connected to a primitive amplifier horn made of rolled copper.
The sound was a constant, frying hiss.
Shhhh-pop. Click. Hiss.
"Report," Marcus said.
Galen didn't turn around. He held up a hand for silence. He was pressing a heavy iron magnet against the third tube, tuning the sensitivity.
Screeech.
A voice cut through the static.
"...Grid 7... negative contact... rats are hiding..."
It was the Enemy. The "Player." Or one of his officers.
The voice was bored. Casual. Like a man commenting on the weather, not a war.
Galen scribbled on a piece of parchment. He turned to Marcus, grinning through his exhaustion. His teeth looked yellow in the lantern light.
"He thinks we are gone, Caesar," Galen shouted, deaf to his own volume. "He calls us rats!"
He shoved a map into Marcus's chest.
It was a crude topographic chart of the valley. Galen had drawn red circles in a wide arc around their position.
"The signal strength," Galen explained, tapping the circles. "When the voice is loud, they are close. When it fades, they are far. I have triangulated them."
Marcus looked at the map. The Ghost's tactical instincts flared, analyzing the data instantly.
The enemy wasn't committing their main force yet. They were probing. Sending out small, fast units—cavalry scouts equipped with radios—to find the Roman line. Once the scouts found the trenches, the gliders would follow.
"They are hunting blindly," Marcus muttered.
He traced a finger along the ridge line to the east.
"Here. Sector 4. The signal is strongest."
Galen nodded frantically. "Yes! A patrol. Maybe fifty horsemen. They are pushing down the wadi."
Marcus straightened up. The fatigue vanished. The hunter took over.
"Get Varus."
General Varus looked like a ghost himself. His armor was dull, stripped of its polish to reduce reflection. He stood in the bunker, staring at the radio setup with deep suspicion.
"They are coming, General," Marcus said. "Fifty Parthian light horse. East ridge."
Varus frowned. "We should deploy the spearmen. Form a phalanx at the ridge crest."
"No," Marcus said.
"Caesar, if we let them crest the ridge, they will see the trenches. They will see everything."
"That is the point," Marcus said. His voice was cold. "Let them see."
Varus bristled. "This is madness! We invite them in? We hide in holes while they ride over us?"
Marcus grabbed Varus by the breastplate. He slammed the old general against the timber wall. Dust rained down from the ceiling.
"Listen to me," Marcus hissed. The Ghost was right at the surface now, savage and impatient. "This isn't the field of Mars, Varus. There is no honor here. There is only the kill."
He released the general.
"Hold fire. All cannons masked. All archers down. Let them ride right up to the lip of the trench. I want them to look down into the grave."
Varus rubbed his chest. He looked at Marcus, then at the hissing radio machine. He spat on the floor.
"As you command."
An hour later.
The trench was silent. A thousand men held their breath.
Marcus stood on a firing step, peering through a slit in the sandbags. He held the primitive radio receiver to his ear.
Static. Hiss.
Then: "...target area clear... moving to check the ravine..."
The voice was close. The signal was crisp.
On the ridge above, dust kicked up.
They appeared.
Parthian Cataphracts. Armored riders on armored horses. They looked like statues made of scales. They rode slowly, confident, their bows resting on their thighs.
They didn't see the trench. The Romans had camouflaged it with netting and sand. To the riders, the valley floor looked empty.
Fifty yards.
Forty.
Thirty.
Marcus could see the faces of the riders now. They were relaxed. One was chewing something. They thought they owned the desert.
Wait, Marcus told himself. Wait.
The lead rider stopped. His horse snorted, sensing something. The rider frowned. He unslung a strange, boxy device from his saddle. A radio. He lifted it to his mouth.
"...Command, I think I see—"
"Now!" Marcus roared.
He didn't need a horn. The order rippled down the line instantly.
The ground exploded.
Not with bombs, but with men.
Camouflage nets were thrown back. Five hundred Roman archers stood up from the earth like corpses rising on Judgment Day.
Twang.
The sound was a single, massive chord.
At thirty yards, you don't miss.
The volley hit the Parthians like a physical wall. Arrows punched through mail, through horse flesh, through throats.
The lead rider—the one with the radio—didn't even scream. An arrow took him in the eye. He was dead before he hit the ground.
"Scorpios!" Marcus yelled.
Concealed ballistae—massive crossbows mounted on tripods—opened fire from the bunkers.
Thunk-thunk-thunk.
Heavy bolts, thick as shovel handles, tore through the horses. It was butchery. The heavy armor of the Cataphracts meant nothing at this range. The kinetic energy shattered ribs and crumpled breastplates.
The patrol disintegrated. Horses screamed, thrashing in the dust. Men tried to crawl away, dragging broken limbs.
"Cease fire!" Marcus bellowed.
Silence crashed back down.
The dust settled.
Fifty men lay dead or dying on the slope. The radio operator's horse was kicking feebly, trying to stand on shattered legs.
Marcus looked at the carnage.
He checked his own pulse. It was steady. Sixty beats per minute.
He felt... efficient.
That terrified him more than the gliders.
He climbed out of the trench. He walked up the slope, his boots sliding on the loose gravel. Narcissus followed close behind, axe ready.
Marcus reached the lead rider. The man was dead, the radio crushed beneath his body.
The box was squawking.
"...Unit 7? Unit 7, report. What is your status?"
Marcus stared at the device. He knelt down. He picked up the handset. It was plastic. Smooth, black plastic. It felt alien in his hand.
He pressed the transmit button.
The static cleared.
"Unit 7 is offline," Marcus said. His voice was flat. Modern English.
There was a long pause on the other end. A stunned silence.
"Who is this?" the voice asked. It wasn't bored anymore.
"This is the Glitch," Marcus said.
He crushed the handset in his fist, plastic cracking, and threw it into the dirt.
He looked down at the trench line. His men were cheering. They were dragging the Parthian bodies into the pits to strip them of armor. They were laughing.
They weren't Romans anymore. They were trench rats.
And Marcus was their King.
He turned back to the bunker. The victory tasted like ash. He had won the skirmish, but he knew what came next. The enemy knew where they were now.
The game had just changed from Hide and Seek to King of the Hill.
And the hill was about to catch fire.